What is iPhone Tethering and which iPhone Carriers Support it?

A lot of you might have heard about Internet Tethering or seen it in the Network settings menu on your iPhone. This tutorial will tell your what is Internet Tethering and also which iPhone Carriers support it.

What is Internet Tethering?

Internet tethering is the feature which lets you connect your desktop or laptop computer to the Internet using the mobile phone’s data network(including 3G or GPRS/EDGE) using the USB cable or bluetooth connection. The upcoming iOS 4.3 firmware will bring Mobile Hotspot feature which will let you share it over wifi too.

Which iPhones support it?

The following iPhone models are capable of tethering:

iPhone 3G

iPhone 3GS

iPhone 4

So, that just leaves out the iPhone 2G. You will need iOS 4 on some carriers while others work on iOS 3 also. Anyway, almost everyone has already upgraded to iOS 4 by now. In case you haven’t you can get iOS 4 here.

Which iPhone Carriers support tethering?

Some iPhone carriers do not support Internet tethering because they don’t want you to use cellular data on any other device apart from your phone.

In India, both Airtel and Vodafone support it but Tata Docomo does not. In US, AT&T did not support tethering initially for the same reason but they allowed it later. You can check the full list of official iPhone carriers and check your country here.

An easy way to check on your iPhone itself: Go to Settings > General > Network If you are able to See Internet Tethering your carrier supports it. Otherwise it doesn’t. There isn’t anything you can do unless you jailbreak your iPhone to enable tethering unofficially.

Are there any minimum Computer Specifications?

There isn’t much actually that you need to worry about. You should have a bluetooth radio if you don’t want to use USB connection. All versions of Windows XP and later are supported and Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later.

Now that you know all about Internet Tethering, if your iPhone supports this feature hop on to our tutorial on ﻿How to Enable iPhone Internet Tethering via USB or Bluetooth.

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